


Under The Same Stars

by idareu2bme



Category: 7 Seeds
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Canon compliant with the netflix tv show maybe not so much with the manga, Existential Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Pre-Slash, Season 1, Unbetaed we die like men, my own existential dread made me write this, semimaru has an existential crisis, yay, you could read this as platonic or as pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26642767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idareu2bme/pseuds/idareu2bme
Summary: Semimaru can't sleep one night and the thoughts that are always just in the back of his head threatening to come forward finally do. It's hard when your emotions feel bigger than you. Luckily, there's Arashi.
Relationships: asai semimaru & aota arashi, asai semimaru/aota arashi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Under The Same Stars

Semimaru couldn’t sleep. 

He laid atop his sleeping bag staring up into the black darkness that was the roof of his tent. The night was warm and still, the air heavy. Most nights, there would at least be a breeze to rustle the leaves of the trees, but not that night. There wasn’t a sound to be heard besides the soft breathing coming from Natsu and Arashi’s nearby tents. 

Semimaru had never experienced a quiet night before th-- well, _before_. He had lived his entire life in the city where there was always movement, always sound, always lights. But, even with his inexperience with nature, he knew that the quiet of their strange new world was unnatural. There should have at least been the hoot of an owl or call of some other nighttime animal. Instead there was nothing. 

The quiet, the stillness, the heat; it was suffocating. 

He felt uneasy. The weight of the air and his own inner turmoil were both weighing on him. Semimaru rolled to his knees and crawled out of the tent. Not wanting to wake the others, he moved as quietly as he could. They were camped at the edge of the forest not far from a rise that looked out over what they had originally assumed was the sea. Semimaru stood and stretched before making his way across the grass to the cliff. 

It wasn’t as dark outside his tent as it had been within. The sky was filled with layers upon layers of stars. They reflected in the still water below so that it was almost as if space were both above and below him. It was beautiful in an oddly oppressive way. It made him feel very small and insignificant. It also made him feel alien, like he was somewhere he didn’t belong. 

Semimaru closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened them again as he slowly exhaled. He stared out over the endless constellations of stars and wondered briefly if they’d also changed. Was he standing under the same stars he’d stood under before everything he knew had ended or had they also changed? He wouldn’t know. He had never spent much time looking up back in the city and, even if he had, the light pollution would have drowned the stars out.

He heard a rustle behind him and held back a sigh. 

“Semimaru?” 

The whisper was loud in the silence. 

Semimaru didn’t move. He stayed standing near the cliff’s edge, kept his face turned toward where the horizon should be. Everything still just looked like the night sky; there was no horizon to be seen. 

He felt more than saw Arashi’s approach, accustomed by then to his presence. 

“Hey,” spoke Arashi from Semimaru’s right. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” said Semimaru, trying for his usual light tone, but it came out flatter than intended. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Just… couldn’t sleep.”

He glanced sideways at Arashi, still feeling off-balance and knowing he was being obvious about it. 

“The water sure is calm tonight,” murmured Arashi.

“Yeah,” said Semimaru.

They stood side by side in the utter silence for more than just a few beats. The quiet was slightly more peaceful and much less looming and somber with Arashi standing at his side. Semimaru couldn’t think of a time where he’d ever just quietly shared space with someone before. It was… nice. Well, it was nicer than a lot of things.

“Something on your mind?” asked Arashi.

Semimaru hummed. He tried not to have anything on his mind since waking up from their cryogenic sleep. It had mostly been working. During the day, they had enough to worry about and do, to keep his mind from wandering. And, once they went to their respective tents each night, he was usually tired enough to fall straight to sleep. This night was different, though. 

“You know, it’s funny,” he started without knowing why. “Even when I was surrounded by millions of people --you know… _before._ Even then, I was totally alone. But now…”

He trailed off, suddenly embarrassed of the sentiment behind his words and unsure of how he had wanted to finish that sentence anyway. 

Arashi let out a long breath beside him.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s tough to think about. All those people are gone, now.” He let out a sigh. Semimaru glanced sideways at him, again. “Long gone. It’s hard to take in and it feels like a new kind of lonely.”

Semimaru didn’t say anything. He tilted his head to study Arashi out of the corner of his eye. Arashi was looking out over the water like he had been before. Even though he wasn’t frowning, his face looked so deeply sad that it made Semimaru uncomfortable. He went back to studying the stars. 

“You’re not alone, Semimaru,” said Arashi, suddenly. 

The intensity of the statement, even in Arashi’s gentle voice, was momentarily startling. 

“Okay,” was all Semimaru could think of in answer. He smiled wryly to himself because Arashi was disgustingly empathetic, but he wasn’t at all on the right track. He had obviously misinterpreted the reasons behind Semimaru’s angst. Semimaru couldn’t fault him for it; _he_ wasn’t even sure what he was feeling at that moment. 

“I’m serious,” said Arashi, turning to him, eyes sparkling in the low light.

“No,” said Semimaru with a grimace-smile. “You’re totally right and, well, _that’s_ what’s funny.”

“Huh?”

“I said that I used to be surrounded by millions of people and was always alone,” explained Semimaru, though he was unsure of whether he was making any sense. If the lost look on Arashi’s face was anything to go off of, he wasn’t. “My life was shitty, okay? I had no friends, not really. My mom didn’t give two shits about me. Right now? This is the least alone I've ever been… heh... It only took the world ending.”

Semimaru let out a soft laugh. It took saying it outloud for the sick irony of the situation to hit him in full. The emotions that he’d been holding at bay ever since waking up after the world had ended were finally bubbling to the surface. He suddenly felt sick with guilt and anger over being happier here than he’d ever been with his mom. He felt her loss. He felt the loss of any semblance of a future he might have had, though he’d never had much hope for one. He felt… he felt a strange mix of all sorts of emotions, each too big and too complicated to name.

His knees feel weak. His body felt shaky. The emotions building in his chest felt too big to contain. It hurt. He sucked in a sharp breath that ended up stinging all the way down his throat. He glanced sideways, feeling eyes on him. Arashi’s expression looked much too soft for his liking. He shouldn’t have said anything. He didn’t need sympathy, didn’t want any of this stupid, mushy crap. He wasn’t some _girl_.

“Fuck off,” growled Semimaru, though Arashi actually hadn’t done or said anything in response. 

It was the wrong move, because apparently it was the thing to make Arashi finally respond. Arashi turned and reached for him. Semimaru wanted to punch him right in the face. Instead, he leaned in. He let his forehead drop into Arashi’s chest, a single sob tore itself painfully from his throat as tears began to form in his eyes. The humiliation was suffocating. He wanted to pull away, but then he felt Arashi’s arms settle around him and, instead, he pressed in even closer. 

Arashi made low, soothing sounds. Semimaru could feel the vibrations of them where his face was pressed into his neck and chest. He took a few deep, shuddering breaths. It was infuriating. He thought again about pushing Arashi away. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hugged and that realization suddenly made him feel even more fragile. Slowly, he brought shaking hands up to Arashi’s shoulders and hugged him back. It was awful.

But, Arashi didn’t speak. He didn’t ask for him to say anything more. Instead, they stood there in the warm, still, silent night, Semimaru pressing heavily into Arashi’s arms, pulling in desperate lungfuls of air --absolutely _not_ crying. 

He was glad Arashi didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to talk about his flood of feelings, it was bad enough that he was _feeling_ them. He didn’t want to sit there and try to dissect them. There was no point in trying to organize and understand them. He would let Arashi hold him just this once while his emotions got the better of him. Then, he’d tamp them back down and be back to his old self by the morning. And, if Arashi knew what was good for him, they’d never speak of it again. 

Yeah, tomorrow he’d be back to normal. Sometimes a person just had to stare at the endless, empty galaxy and cry into a boy’s chest about the fact that the world had ended while they were sleeping. 

It was fine. 

Everything would be fine.


End file.
